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Via reader Wyndi comes this truly gross NPR piece about how the wealthy are apparently breeding like crazy, in a trend dubbed (seriously) “competitive birthing.” One mother actually says, “Baby number 4 has become the new must-have accessory.”
Given the incredibly high cost of raising children these days — with housing, child care, camps, clothing, and college tuition — big families are apparently now a status symbol. A lot of the NPR story is anecdotal, but the reporter does talk to a demographics analyst, who says that census data shows the number of high-income families having three or four kids has shot up 30 percent in the last 10 years. “It’s an unprecedented jump, and completely counter to 100 years of history,” he says.
I feel like the kids-as-status-symbol story bubbles upoccasionally. But what’s new here, if you take the NPR reporter’s word for it, is that having lotsa babies has become a way for super-educated moms who have left the workforce to “justify” their choice to opt out.
In other words, the more kids, the more comfortable these women seem with their stay-at-home status. One mom explains, “I know in some sense I feel more validated to say I’m a mother of four. Of course I’m not working now! What are you thinking? How could i possibly do anything else? This is a full-time job.” Another says that having more kids “gets you a lot more recognition for a notoriously thankless job.”
I have no idea how widespread this “trend” really is. But it doesn’t seem completely far-fetched to me that women who used to be career-driven would want to direct their competitive energies somewhere — and for some women, that’s become a quest to be the best mom. (“Best” in this case, of course, equals “most kids.”) Says one woman, “All that drive gets channeled into the children when they quit their job.”
It’s also easy to see that a formerly successful businesswoman would feel pressured to ensure that anyone could tell, just by looking at the size of her brood, that there’s no way she could have continued to work outside the home. It’s as if more babies are a defense mechanism — not only against the raised eyebrows and judgments of women who stayed in the workforce, but also against any doubts these wealthy breeders may themselves harbor about their decision to opt out.

Rebecca Traister has a great, comprehensive piece about how “simple, systemic failures” — like these — ensure that “the act of having a baby turns out to be a stunningly precarious economic and professional choice” in the US. Currently at home with a new child, she notes that the fact that she’s supported by the good parental leave policy offered by The New Republic means she’s “won the woman lottery.”

Eighty-eight percent of American women do not get paid for a single day or a single hour after they give birth. When I had my first child, three-and-a-half years ago, for reasons related to my particular professional choices, I did not get paid leave.

This is what it felt like: It felt ...

Rebecca Traister has a great, comprehensive piece about how “simple, systemic failures” — like these — ensure that “the act of having a baby turns out to be a stunningly precarious economic and professional choice” in the ...

Brittney Cooper has a provocative piece up over at the Crunk Feminist Collective about (symbolically) slaying the patriarch and matriarch of The Cosby Show clan, Cliff and Clair Huxtable, in light of resurfaced concerns over real life patriarch Bill Cosby’s rape accusations. There’s a lot there to make you reconsider just how warm and fuzzy and lovable the character of Cliff Huxtable was. But here I want to talk about Clair.

I was born into a world where the Huxtables were near-universally beloved and held as the gold standard of black romantic possibilities. Each was an ideal partner in the context of a heteronormative relationship. But Clair even more so.

Because Clair was this personification of black womanhood ...

Brittney Cooper has a provocative piece up over at the Crunk Feminist Collective about (symbolically) slaying the patriarch and matriarch of The Cosby Show clan, Cliff and Clair Huxtable, in light of resurfaced concerns ...

A Better Balance, a legal advocacy organization in New York City, has a new report explaining how the “bias and inflexibility towards women in the workplace that starts when they become pregnant and snowballs into lasting economic disadvantages” is driving gender inequality and overall economic inequality in the city:

Despite advances in gender equality over the past 40 years, women continue to jeopardize their livelihoods simply by having children. The pregnancy penalty helps to explain why mothers as a whole continue to earn five to six percent less than non-mothers, and why historically disadvantaged women, single mothers and black women, have seen their wage penalties rise sharply since 1977. In New York City, single, childless women under age ...

A Better Balance, a legal advocacy organization in New York City, has a new report explaining how the “bias and inflexibility towards women in the workplace that starts when they become pregnant and snowballs ...